tury the church was
rebuilt, as we see it, and very beautiful it is, in its Early English
dress, passing into Decorated, in the chancel and transepts.

From Milford, through a whole spring day, I went on by the coast as far
I could, westward to Christchurch. All the way, the sea, the sky, and
the view of the island and of Christchurch bay closed by Hengistbury
Head in the west, and the long bar on which Hurst Castle stands in the
east were worth a king's ransom. They say all this coast has strong
attractions for the geologist; but what of the poet and painter? Surely
here, when the wind comes over the sea and the Island, showing his
teeth, to possess the leaning coast, one may see and understand why
England is the England of my heart. At least I thought so, and lingered
there so long that twilight had fallen before I found myself under the
darkness of the great Priory of Christchurch, the goal of my desire.

It was not without due cause and reason that I wished to see, instead
of an Apostle disputing, England before the fall. Indeed I am sure that
I should not have been unwise to exchange "Rome in her flower" for such
a sight as that; Christchurch proves it.

We march up and down England and count up our treasures, of which this
Priory of Christchurch is not the least; but we never pause perhaps to
remember what, through the damnable act of Thomas Cromwell and Henry
Tudor, we have lost. What we have lost! hundreds of churches, hundreds
of monasteries as fine as Christchurch, and hundreds far more solemn
and reverent. Reading, which now gives a title to an Isaacs, (God save
us all!) was, before the fall, just a great monastery, a Norman pile as
grand as Durham or Ely. What of Glastonbury and Amesbury, older far,
and of those many hundred others which stood up strong before God for
our souls--without avail? They are gone; Christchurch in some sort
remains.

Christchurch stands in the angle where the rivers Avon and Stour meet,
and it is thus secured upon the north, east, and south; its great and
perhaps its only attraction is the great Priory church in whose name
that of the town, Twyneham, has long been lost; but there are beside a
ruined Norman house, and a pretty mediaeval bridge over the Avon, from
which a most noble view of the great church may be had. This, which
dates in its foundation from long before the Conquest, is to-day a
great cruciform building consisting roughly of Norman nave and
transepts, the na